Chapter 5 #2
I stood in his kitchen with my inside-out shirt and my non-blue mug and the sound of Potato snoring on the couch and thought, He has a tutorial binder . . . for the kittens . . . with page numbers.
Then I thought, His handwriting is really beautiful.
I chose not to examine that second thought.
I put it in a box.
I closed the box.
I shoved the box into a corner of my brain reserved for things I would not be addressing today or possibly ever.
Then I fed the kittens.
Yes, I read page twelve first.
It was very thorough.
By the time I got to Barbacks for my pre-shift shift, I had enough new material for a one-man show.
“He has a whiteboard,” I announced, dropping my bag behind the bar and tying on my apron. “On his fridge. It’s fucking color-coded with a legend and everything.”
Finn was restocking the beer coolers. He glanced up with the patient expression of a man who had been expecting something like this and had made peace with it.
“Okay,” he said. “He sounds organized. This is bad how?”
“Green is for feeding, blue for medications, red is for vet appointments, and purple is for behavioral notes. Each animal has its own row, Finn. Individual rows. With columns. It’s a matrix. The man has created a matrix for his pets.”
“That sounds . . . thoughtful.”
“It’s fucking bananas! And his handwriting, Finn, it’s like calligraphy. Who writes like that on a whiteboard? That’s not normal. It’s a cry for help.”
Jacks appeared from the back, carrying a case of limes. He’d clearly missed the introduction to my tale. “How was the first night?”
“I woke up with a furry demon on my face. A different demon was inside my shoe, and a third was on top of the door, Jacks. On top of the door. The top edge. Balanced. Like a little furry Simone Biles.”
“That sounds adorable.”
“It was terrifying. I thought I was being haunted by tiny ghosts. And then . . . get this . . . Peter communicated with me via Post-it note—not a conversation, Jacks. He didn’t use words from his mouth like a person.
He wrote a Post-it note and stuck it on the fridge.
There were instructions, like I’m some contractor he’s hired to perform a service. ”
Mark came through from the office, laptop under his arm. “How’s the new living situation?”
“He has a tutorial binder,” I said, no longer sure to whom I was speaking.
Mark stopped. “For what?”
“For the kittens. Keep up here, Mark. He has a freakin’ binder with pages dedicated to the feeding and care of each pet.
He told me to read page twelve before I could touch them.
Page twelve! What are pages one through eleven?
What happens on page thirteen? Am I preparing for a pop quiz or something? ”
Mark tilted his head, considering. “I mean, that’s actually pretty responsible. If you’re fostering animals, a care guide makes sense. It’s good practice.”
“Mark. Mark! You’re supposed to be on my side here. Peter is a pet psychopath!”
Mark shrugged. “I’m on the side of organizational clarity.”
“You’re a traitor,” I shouted, rolling my R like Alan Cumming on the reality show I would never get enough of.
Mia walked in ten minutes into my shift. She had the day off and was apparently drawn to the bar by our group chat activity like a shark to blood in the water. She ordered a soda, sat at the bar, and propped her chin in her hand.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “From the beginning, and don’t skip anything.”
So I repeated the tale I’d already told three—no, four times.
I told all of them, in installments between drink orders, in fragments during slow moments and in a continuous, rolling monologue. This became known in Barbacks lore as the first episode of what the crew would come to call The Roommate Chronicles.
“He has a special coffee mug?” Mia asked with the delighted focus of someone watching a particularly funny prank being pulled in front of her. “And he told you not to touch it.”
“He said, ‘Don’t use the blue one,’ with the same passion a person might use to say, ‘Don’t touch the nuclear launch codes.’”
“What does the blue mug look like?”
“It’s just a blue mug. There’s nothing special, no logo or writing. It’s just blue.”
“There’s a story behind that mug,” Mia said with absolute certainty. “Nobody protects a plain blue mug like that unless it means something.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
Now I was thinking about it.
Now I was going to obsess about it for the rest of the day.
“What’s he look like?” Mia asked.
“What?”
“Newspaper Robe Man. What does he look like? You’ve only described the robe. I need the full picture.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“He’s tall,” I said. “Taller than me, which isn’t hard, but still.
He’s got dark hair that’s kind of messy but not on purpose.
He wears these wire-rimmed glasses that won’t stay in place, and he’s got this jawline that’s very .
. .” I made a vague geometric gesture with my hand that conveyed nothing useful.
“Very what?” Mia asked.
“Very there. Like, it’s a jawline. It exists. It’s structural.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed with the predatory focus of a woman assembling a theory. “Benjamin.”
“What.” God, I hated it when she drawled my full name like that.
“You think he’s cute.”
“Mia! No! I think he’s infuriating. He communicates through refrigerator stationery—while I’m standing right beside him, mind you—and he looked at my shaking hands like I was a liability he was calculating the insurance cost of.”
“So you think he’s cute,” she repeated, a hound with a scent.
“I did not say yes.”
“You described his jawline as ‘structural.’ That’s a yes.”
“Structural is a neutral observation. Buildings are structural. Bridges are structural. It’s an engineering term.”
“You’re as much of an engineer as I am.”
Jacks, who had been quietly cutting limes while listening to this entire exchange, looked up and said, “He sounds nice.”
“He’s not nice, Jacks. He’s . . . an iceberg with power steering.
He’s controlled and precise and controlling.
In a controlled, controlling way. And, damn it, he’s quiet in a way that makes me want to be quiet, too, which is a very weird thing for me to say because I have never wanted to be quiet in my entire life. ”
Jacks smiled. It was the knowing, dimpled, irritating smile of a friend who was not going to say what he was thinking but wanted me to know that he was thinking it.
“Stop smiling like that.”
“Like what?” Jacks asked, batting his fucking eyelashes (which were quite long and lovely).
“Like you know something.”
“I don’t know anything.” He went back to his limes. “Except that you just talked about this guy for forty-five minutes without stopping.”
“I talk about everything for forty-five minutes without stopping. That’s my personality. It’s not evidence of anything.”
“Okay, Benjamin,” Jacks said.
“Oh, no. Not you, too. I can’t take anyone other than Mia—”
“Benjamin,” Finn said, appearing behind me with a case of beer in his arms.
“Fuck a duck,” I groused, tossing my towel on the bar before grabbing a bottle of vodka, pouring a drink I hadn’t been asked to make, tossing it back in one go, and changing the subject to literally anything else.
Finn didn’t let the subject stay changed for long.
Nor did Jacks nor Mia nor Mark. Hell, Rod—the same Rod who hadn’t left the kitchen in weeks—came out to the main bar just to ask about the kittens he heard I’d gotten recently.
I had not acquired any kittens, I tried to explain.
They’d acquired me.
No one bought it.